The Paintings
by HappyLittleFlower
Summary: "There was an old saying about walls having eyes and ears. In that household, they literally did." An insight into the aftermath of the FAYZ.


One of more notable qualities of the humble Spanish-style bungalow was the walls. Artwork – framed originals of various mediums – covered almost every inch of polished wood, from A4 sheets of frantically scrawled portraits to head-height scenes and landscapes. Upon entering the small kitchenette one found themselves stared at by tens of pencil-sketch busts, some with handwritten names etched into the corners ("Dekka Talent", "Sinder", "Charles Merriman") and others uncaptioned. A padlocked glass-front gun case containing a battered rifle peeked out from one corner of the lounge. Even that was marred: with a few names and the first line of a prayer knife-scratched into the barrel. The entirety of the single-story house was home to a variety macabre mementos, from a war-beaten gun to the shadowed faces of the dead and living.

Each bust sold for upwards of three-hundred dollars on the market. Landscapes varied. One such oil painting, "Tramonto", depicted a hellish scene of inferno and massacre; the sight was so tragically heartwrenching that it had been compared to Pablo Picasso's "Guernica". That painting alone had paid off the mortgage on the house. Another, "The Plaza", was a more reverential piece that had paid the electricity bills for months on end. Each piece was exceedingly rare, with few replicas in existence, and as such were highly sought after as documentation of the greatest phenomenon of the century: the Perdido Beach Anomaly. Known to survivors as the FAYZ.

One such survivor, a young Hispanic brunet, stood in the hallway of his humble home now, returning from work to find himself stared at by dead friends and much-loved allies. The FAYZ had vanished long before, and yet the survivors and victims were immortalised in ink and graphite. It was repulsive.

There was an old saying about walls having eyes and ears. In that household, they literally did.

The young man fixed his gaze to the hardwood floor and went about his business – taking off his coat, hanging up his keys, pouring a glass of lemonade – without looking up. He could not bring himself to look them in the eye, much like he could not have brought himself to look their parents in the eye as he fabricated lies of how their son or daughter died. Plague, crossfire, coyotes, suicide. The list haunted him like the portraits haunted him.

Drink in hand, the man made his way through the house to a conservatory overlooking a small, neat garden. Within the sunny space, strewn carelessly on the tiled floor, were a hodgepodge of supplies: chalks, charcoals, paints, pastels, water cups, brushes, and other paraphernalia the man did not know the names of. It was the only place free of hollow-eyed, judgemental portraits. At first he almost failed to notice who he had been looking for. Perched on a stool, sitting bizarrely close to a mounted easel, head tilted and lips worrying in concentration, blond hair tied back and fair skin radiant in the sunlight, was another man the same age as the former. Smudged up to his elbows with stray flecks of paint, he looked as native to the conservatory as any of the materials scattered around him. The other man called softly to the artist by name – "Roger," – but received no acknowledgement.

The blond only looked away from his artwork when the brunet padded over and knelt to kiss his cheek. "Roger," he whispered again, relieved to be free of the art that laid claim to every other part of the house. "My Roger."

The smile the artist gave was soft and quiet. He, too, was a survivor of the FAYZ, having been found floating semi-conscious in the ash-defiled water of Lake Tramonto, severely wounded and near to starvation. He had been practically mute since his rescue some five years ago, and while therapy had somewhat helped in that he sometimes spoke, words from him were as rare as his paintings. Instead, in this instance, he merely stroked his beloved's cheek with one hand, leaned his chin on the other's head, and continued to paint. Only when the artist's touch faded did the brunet look up at the canvas – into his own face. He suffered a very brief moment of fear in which he thought that he had been portrayed with empty eyes and monotone colour, but the face on the canvas was one that brought a lump to his throat. An easy-going smile, eyes with restrained vibrancy and an expression of what could only be love: the artist had painted him for how he saw him.

The brunet was not entirely aware that he weeping until his beloved artist slid from the stool to the floor and gathered him into his lean arms. Completely safe in the sanctity of his embrace, the brunet held nothing of his spontaneous breakdown within himself. His emotions leaked onto the artist as incoherent sobs, streams of tears and confessions of love. And it was then, on the floor, bathed in a halo of sunlight, that the artist spoke just three simple words: "I've got you."

They had found and lost one another in their own personal Hells: the loyal soldier fighting someone else's war and the determined artist clinging to life in a world set against his mellow nature. They had found and lost one another in the aftermath, believing one another dead, and disintegrating against one another upon finding that they were both alive. They had found and lost one another long after, the soldier in his night terrors and the artist in his flashbacks, each safe in the knowledge that no matter how vivid their demons became, the other was always within arm's reach. They had found and lost one another, and clung on to one another, for they had gone through Hell so barbarous that the only thing left that could hurt them was the loss of one another. They had thought they had gone through that once. They never would again.

"I've got you."


End file.
